I can't believe I am asking a question about emoji, but I am.May 26, 2014 11:01 PMSubscribe

I have an iphone 4S. I imessage with my husband and son a lot, they using an iPhone 3 and an iPad and iMac.
If I send a message with an emoji in it, the emoji shows on my phone screen as the graphic/picture, and shows on their screen as the graphic/picture.
If they send me a message with an emoji it shows on their screen as a graphic/picture, but shows on my screen as letters/symbols (e.g. :) <3 etc.)
I know it is a bit silly, but this is driving my crazy. And my nearly 10 year old likes using emoji so I would rather figure it out than just say 'don't send me the damn things'.posted by Megami to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Are you talking about using the emoji "alphabet" that you can load onto your phone/tablet, or physically typing in the less than character and the number 3 to make a heart?

If the latter, I would have everyone add the emoji alphabet to their texting app of choice rather than typing in what used to be called emoticons and expecting them to show up as an emoji symbol.>posted by Sara C. at 11:39 PM on May 26, 2014

Is this in Facebook messaging? Make sure they actually create the emoji by using the emoji keyboard rather than entering the code.
If that doesn't answer your question, we'll need more info such as what app does this happen in, how do you indeed enter the emoji etc.

Which version of iOS are you using, and which version are they? It looks like Apple changed the emoji encoding in iOS 5, so if that is an iPhone 3G or an un-upgraded iPhone 3GS, that could explain it.posted by rlio at 12:42 AM on May 27, 2014

Follow up: This works really well on my 4S! :)posted by lungtaworld at 4:55 AM on May 27, 2014

No , this is iMessage. Nothing to do with Facebook.
I already have the emoji keyboard, as I wrote the emoji I type in outgoing messages show on my phone, but not incoming.
We all have the emoji keyboard and that is what we are using to send these emoticons, not typing in the letter/symbol combinationsposted by Megami at 8:20 AM on May 27, 2014

What happens when they send you emoji like "pile of poo", "roasted sweet potato" or "speaker with cancellation stroke" — ones that, unlike <3 and :) don't have text-equivalents?posted by mumkin at 4:50 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

I get the text - for example 'nerd'posted by Megami at 10:37 AM on May 28, 2014

I can't figure out what "nerd" would be — I know it's an emoticon in Skype, and probably AIM and several other clients, but as best I can tell it's not part of the Unicode Emoji set that you'd get with the iOS keyboard.

Not to be contrarian, but are you absolutely sure they're sending via Apple's iOS Messages app and not through a different client? If they select the Objects tab of the iOS emoji keyboard and send you the first symbol—PINE DECORATION, or U+1F38D (U+D83C U+DF8D)—what do you receive?

Also, what color are the speech balloons on each side of your conversation? (I'm wondering if this could be an iMessage > SMS thing)posted by mumkin at 8:38 PM on June 5, 2014

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